Gmail Labels are like tags that allow you to tag received email and they also function as custom categories or folders that help you group and classify your email. Labels are useful if you receive a lot of mail from diverse contacts and companies. The primary folders in your Gmail account are the Inbox, Sent Messages, Trash, Spam, Drafts and View All, but if you need more folders, you can use Labels to create custom folders that help you classify incoming email for your needs. This feature helps you organize and sort your mail. After labeling all your important email, you are left with a clean inbox that helps you identify all the worthless email that is still coming into your inbox.

Labels not only assist you in organizing and cleaning your inbox, but they also save time and effort that you would spend going through heaps of email to find messages of a particular topic or contact. Just by looking at the labels on the left sidebar of your Gmail account, you will be able to identify a folder that contains a subject that you are looking for. As an example, depending on the types of email that you receive, you can create a folder labeled “Jobs” to track your job applications, “Utility Bills” to track your home bills and “Online Shopping” to keep track of your online purchases and orders. If you feel that broad categories are not so streamlined for your needs, you can create more specific folders e.g. “Amazon” “EBay” “Software” “Data Plans” “Restaurants” “Travel” “Doctor” and “Subscriptions”.

Labeling Practices

It is recommended to label email as soon as you receive it. In most cases, people will only think of Labeling when they have accumulated a lot of email in their inbox. This will give you a lot of work that could have been avoided by starting earlier, and it’s certainly not a pleasant job to go back through hundreds of messages. If you are like a lot of users that are not email-geeks or technically savvy, you will only realize the need for organization when your inbox is filled with junk and clutter. It’s very easy to lose track of important messages among the clutter and this is the point when most users with a busy inbox find it convenient to start labeling their messages, but simply labeling your email will not sort the clutter issues. The common assumption is that after labeling your email, all future incoming mails will be automatically assigned to that Label, but as you have already noticed this is not the case.

How to Label Incoming Mail

In order to automatically label all future incoming messages, you have to apply the settings for each of your contacts. As soon as your receive email from contact X or email X, you must do the following:

– In your inbox, select the message
– Click the More tab on the far right of top menu
– In the drop-down box, select Filter Messages Like These
– A box will pop up. The From filter is prefilled with the email address of the sender
– Go down the box and click Create Filter on the bottom right of the box
– A new box will pop up. On the form, select Apply the label, then choose the label from the selection. Click Create Filter at the bottom. That’s all.
– All future incoming messages from this contact will be automatically labeled, allowing you to check new messages under that Label instead of going to the inbox.

Mass Labeling Incoming Mail

Gmail allows you to mass label multiple messages in your inbox. This is a quicker method for those who have accumulated a lot of email and who never labeled their email initially. To label multiple messages at once, open your inbox. On the current page view, select all messages that you want to assign a Label. Click the More tab at the top. Select Filter Messages in the drop down list. A box that is prefilled with selected contacts will pop up. Click Create Filter on the bottom of the form. A new box will appear. Select Apply Label and choose the label that you want to apply. Click Create Filter on the bottom of the form. That’s all. You have just assigned a Label to all future incoming email from the selected contacts.